Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Simulating classes in C

I have to admit, I like to program in C. In some ways, it is simpler than some of the newer, high level languages, and I really enjoy being closer to the machine code. Perhaps I'm a bit obsessive about efficiency. Still, I sometimes long for classes and objects in my C programs, (This is where you tell me that I should use C++ or Objective-C.) so I decided to figure out how I could simulate classes in plain old ANSI C.

It turned out to be quite easy. After I read up on function pointers, I created a struct which contains references to functions (kind of like class methods). Here's a simple example of what I'm talking about:

When I run the above, the program prints "thefunction says 7".From there, I decided to create a family of structures which would simulate classes, objects, and allow polymorphic function calls.

One way to divide up data and methods in an OO way is to say that the class dictates the methods which can be used with the data in an object instance. So we could say that a class contains a list of functions. Using function pointers, the method called can be changed at runtime, as long as all of the functions have the same stack profile. Have I lost you yet? So what I needed to do was create a generic function prototype which abstracts the parameter list into a common format. While I was at it, I decided to lose the restriction that methods return only one value, so the results of a method call will be stored in a structure which is passed in as a parameter. (The method should probably be called a procedure instead of a function.) Perhaps it would be simpler to show you the code.

typedef struct { void* type; /* This will point to a JSClass. */ void* data;} JSObject;

I was going to discuss the functions I created to streamline "class" method invocation, but this post is getting a bit long. So I've decided to try something fun. I'm going to ask you, gentle reader, to suggest a design for a function which simplifies invocation of an object method. I will mail $1 (USD) to the person who posts the "best" working solution in the comments below. (I'll be compiling using gcc -ansi. Oh, and US residents only, I don't want to run into any strange rules.). In addition to a dollar, you'll have won bragging rights for the first of my blog challenges. After a week or two, I'll post my solution and we can all compare notes. Happy coding!